ENGR 101/HUM 200 Technology and Society October 5, 2005.
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Transcript of ENGR 101/HUM 200 Technology and Society October 5, 2005.
ENGR 101/HUM 200Technology and Society
October 5, 2005
Agenda
• Questions from yesterday
• “Make It Better” assignment
• Your topic preferences/constraints (turn in index card at end of class)
• Speculative Fiction (aka sci-fi!), Possible Futures, and the People Who Build Stuff
“Make It Better”
• If you want to arrange yourselves into a group, please do so. Write group member names down on card and turn in today.
• Otherwise, write down up to three general subjects/technologies in which you are interested AND any schedule constraints you may have (i.e. can’t meet after 5 pm any day) and turn in today.
Why Sci-Fi?
• Themes from The Diamond Age– Transportation (pedomotive, blades)– Energy (The Feed)– Information dissemination (electronic media;
ractives, books!)– Social structures (claves)
Why Sci-Fi?
• Themes from The Diamond Age– Transportation (pedomotive, blades)– Energy (The Feed)– Information dissemination (electronic media;
ractives, books!)– Social structures (claves)
Why Not Sci-Fi?
• Themes from “The Machine Stops”– Transportation– Energy (power plant in France; centralized
and distant)– Information Dissemination (lectures, music,
The Book)– Social structures (mediated interaction,
erasure of family structures, economics, individual choice)
“The Machine Stops”
• http://www.tcnj.edu/~casa3/machine_index.html
Possible Futures
• Some predictions have been a little better than others
Visionary Transportation
• Why don’t we have flying cars? We were promised flying cars!
Transportation in The Diamond Age
• Blades
• Pedomotive
• Airships
Robotics
• And robots! We were promised robots!
And Interplanetary Politics…
And What About Intergalactic Travel?
Sci-Fi As Snapshot of Culture
Next class
• Read “The Engineering Disciplines” (short)
• Read Donald Norman, from The Design of Everyday Things (not short, but interesting!)
• Assignment into “Make It Better” groups